Amoeba Music and Phil Blankenship are proud to present some of our film favorites at Los Angeles’ last full-time revival movie theater. See movies the way they're meant to be seen - on the big screen and with an audience!

Humboldt County's Potluck may have spent the last decade building a rap rep closely associated with their Northern California home county's best known export, but below the surface of this talented, hard-working, hip-hop duo is a lot more than blunts and weed smoke, insists member UnderRated.

"Our first message might appear to be the weed because we are from Humboldt and our name is Potluck," said the rapper/producer backstage at BB Kings in NYC recently as part of the North American End of Days tour with Twiztid, Boondox, and Prozak. "But what we really try to do is spread a message of peace and to show that everyone can get along for real." Proof lies, he says, in the fact that a comparatively small Jewish white guy born in the small town NorCal Humboldt area and his partner in rhyme, the SoCal born African American 1 Ton, who lives up to his name, can get along so well. "We are totally different people but we get along great. We have learned from each other, coming up from completely different backgrounds. He's not from Humboldt. He's from San Diego. So he came up north and learned a different way...a Humboldt way, which is laid back, cool, you know be cool to everybody. And then I learned from him like this world ain't all cool and easy."

Further proving that Potluck is a lot more than just stoner-anthem makers, are several fantastic songs on the new album Pipe Dreams like "Computer Love," a hilarious commentary about the perils of online romantic connections, and the serious, heartfelt "My Dad," which is an ode to the pair's respective fathers. "That's really a very personal song to both of us," said 1 Ton. "You see, my father is really sick right now, so that is why I start my verse with 'Some thoughts that you deserve to hear before you pass away,' because a lot of the reason why I am who I am is because of him. So it's like a tribute song but in the same way a celebration of the relationship we have. I just hope that now with my kids that I can have the same relationship."

The two members of Potluck, neither of whom were rappers to begin with, first met at a DJ audition. "We both started out as DJ's," recalled emcee 1 Ton, who, despite his intimidating Suge Knight-like presence, is nothing like the Death Row figure. "We met at a DJ trial for a club and we started DJ'ing [together], four turntables, ya know, rockin' underground house parties and all that stuff and we started making beats. And then reluctantly at the very end we started rhyming, you know just due to people flaking and not coming over to rap and stuff like that. So then it just kinda snowballed into what it is today. But we reluctantly got into rap." That was a decade ago. Since then, the pair have worked hard at honing their craft and equally as hard at building their careers, mostly through tireless networking wherever a door opened for them. All of their hard work has paid off.

As God is my witness, I don't know what I'm supposed to pack my collection of vintage boxes in.

Phew! Hey – how’s it going? Oh, you’re reading the Amoeblog, I see. Well, hope I’m not interrupting you – I just needed to take a break from unpacking. I don’t know how I fit so much stuff into my previous, tiny, New York-style apartment! I mean, I don’t remember sleeping on a pile of books and LP’s eight yards deep, but I must have.

The whole process of moving can be especially complicated for those of us who are avid collectors of music and film and all manner of art-faggory. It becomes a reenactment of that crucial scene from Sophie’s Choice (I won’t include any spoilers here for those of you who’ve never seen the film; suffice it to say that, due to Sophie’s fear of baking soda, her love for the town’s baker suffers some dire tragedies. And her cat turns out to be the murderer.)

I find myself reconsidering whether or not I need a collection of punk 45’s, but before I can decide, I’m distracted by the hilarity and exuberance of the Blatz song then suddenly stuck in my head, and before I know it, everything’s in the box “to be saved” and all that makes it to the thrift store is a redundant garlic press and a cutting board whose origin I cannot recall.

I suppose I could live without my antique sextant. But what if I wanna measure the altitude of a
celestial object above the horizon while onboard a ship without electricity? ...I better keep it.

To be honest, I never really identified with the “collector” mentality. I have this many albums because I love this many (and more) and I have these DVD’s, books and posters for the same reason. I don’t keep hold of anything simply because of its cash value. I never questioned what I could sell my autographed, first pressing of Stories From the Nerve Bible for on Craig’s List – I just wanna read it again and again, ‘s all.

In addition to the whole DIY ethic that was instilled, another great gift of both the punk rock movement and the post-punk movement that immediately followed it was how they each helped open people up to embracing a really wide & diverse range of music by artists doing anything from punk derived guitar music to varying styles of electronic, industrial, dub, roots reggae, world, and spoken word, etc. And of the spoken word artists, none matched the brilliant "bard of Salford," punk poet John Cooper Clarke, whose satirical & witty run on rants easily match any of the best hip-hop emcees.

John Cooper Clarke (JCC), who looked a lot like Dylan circa Blonde On Blonde when he first came to fame in the late seventies, hailed from Salford, Greater Manchester, the same area that Joy Division came from -- a group with whom he will forever be associated. As well as opening for such acts as the Sex Pistols, The Fall, The Buzzcocks, and Elvis Costello, JCC also opened for Joy Division. In fact, in one memorable moment from the 2007 Joy Division biopic Control, the artist convincingly recreates, 30 full years later, a performance from a 1977 Joy Division concert where he supported the group.

Additionally, he can be seen performing his best known poem, "Evidently Chickentown," at the start and end of the video for Joy Division's live performance of "Transmission" (clip below), which features JCC reading the refrain and third verses. And even after Ian Curtis' suicide, when the band morphed into New Order, he continued to open for them, even in 1984 at a Music for Miners benefit at London's Royal Festival Hall.

Truly a poet of the people, his engaging everyman tales, delivered typically as witty, scathing satirical takes on every day, humorously tackled topics such as the British working class's favorite package holiday destination ("Majorca") to people's obsession with health and fitness ("Health Fanatic" + "Bronze Adonis"). "(I Married a) Monster from Outer Space" was as much an absurdist tale as a clever commentary on racism. His poem "The Pest," in which every other word began with the letter P, proved his masterful control of the English language. While he sometimes performed with music accompaniment backing from The Invisible Girls (Pete Shelly was a member), his poetry was at its best when at its rawest: delivered a cappella in a live, rowdy punk club setting.